DogDays Magazine – Pushing Aggressive Rollerskating

Aggressive Rollerskating is conquering Germany's skate parks

Aggressive Rollerskating? What is that? I assume not everyone knows what aggressive rollerskating is at the moment. Aggressive rollerskating means nothing more than rollerskating in skate parks or on the streets.

Unlike the usual suspects in skate parks, the skateboarders, BMXers and scooter riders, aggressive rollerskating is female-dominated. Things are changing in Germany's skate parks. With the DogDays Magazin, aggressive rollerskating already got it's first magazine in Europe. In June the second edition of the magazine hit the market. The perfect opportunity to talk with Marta, the publisher, about the background and content of the magazine.

Hey Marta, thanks a lot for your time. You just published the second edition of the DogDays magazine. How did you get involved with aggressive rollerskating in the first place?

Like most women, everything started with “Roller Derby”. Twelve years ago I founded, together with some friends, the “Stuttgart Valley Roller Girls”. It was the first German Roller Derby club at this time and until last year I was really involved in the club. Then, two years ago, I discovered aggressive skating for me. Like skating in ramps, bowls, street and stuff and that’s how it all started.

Do you have the feeling that aggressive rollerskating is growing in Germany?

Yes, that’s for sure. You can see it quite clearly when you are part of the scene. At the moment, many women are kinda discovering the skate parks for themselves. Aggressive rollerskating is way more than just a sport right now. It has something to do with community and identity. Especially on Instagram and social media in general, you can see how fast the scene is growing worldwide.

How did you come up with the idea for a print magazine?

The idea first popped in my head when I was still playing “Roller Derby”. At this time I simply did not have the time for a print magazine about roller skating. I then did a road trip with my boyfriend Jonas through Mexico and we started a little blog about the trip for our friends. After that we decided: "Yeah lets just do a print-magazine, why not?" There is also no other real print magazine about aggressive rollerskating out there, besides a few fanzines.

Why exactly did you decide to make a print magazine and not an online blog?

Because there is a lot online but not much print content and Jonas and I are also print fans. We hope there are more people out there thinking that way. We know it is gonna be hard to even cover the costs for a print magazine, but print is something that stays. On Instagram and co. there is so much, but it is just too much, so that nothing is really sustainable. To see your picture in a magazine, that you can actually bring wherever you want is way cooler. Printed photos have a higher emotional value.

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Did you already had some experience with a print magazine?

Even though I'm a journalist it is still something totally different when you publish a whole magazine. When I work as a journalist, my tasks are just a small part of what I'm doing for the magazine right now. You get confronted with so many more challenges. A lot of legal aspects for example. You also have to write many emails to get all the texts, info and photos etc. That's way more work than just writing.

What is the actual content of the magazine?

We did not want to define everything beforehand. We will see whats possible in our time schedule and what makes the most of sense. What we want to do is to support the growing scene of aggressive skating and give the sport a platform. The content is a mixture of travel stories, interviews and of course skate pictures. Interviews with stars of the scene but also with newcomers, people we just discovered or who are doing cool stuff.

Is there a higher goal that you want to achieve with the magazine?

No, I would not say that. I will just see how it goes. It was not easy to estimate how many people are really interested in a print magazine. At the moment we are just stoked to do that, to work on it and all the feedback we receive is really positive. So yeah, let’s see where we stand with the magazine in a year.

How often do you want to publish the magazine ?

Actually we set up a quite ambitious goal to publish the magazine four times a year. It is definitely tough to publish a magazine with 50 pages, that I mostly write myself every three months. For the future, I hope we can work together with other authors to make it a bit easier. But for now we will see if we are able to do this.

How did you come up with the name „DogDays"?

It should not sound like a skate magazine right away. In addition, Jonas and I named our blog about the skating tour through Mexico "Hundetage" (Engl: Dog Days). These "DogDays", the hot summer days, where you just live into the day, fit quite well with skating. Besides that, the name is catchy and it is easy to remember.

For more information about DogDays magzine check out their website and social profile on Instagram.